Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Physical Therapy - Department of Growth and development Disorders in Pediatric

Background, Fatigue is a common worrying complaint among people performing physical activities on the basis of training or rehabilitation, and it is becoming a common symptom in pediatric health conditions. Purpose, This study was conducted in order to investigate the effect of fatigue induced physical activity on proprioception, muscle activity and cognitive functions among adolescents. Methods Fifty adolescents aged 16-18 years old from different secondary schools and students of the first year of the faculty of physical therapy, Cairo University was included in this study. They all went through assessment for proprioceptive acuity changes (active joint repositioning sense), muscle activity changes and cognitive functions changes pre and post fatiguing exercising on an electronically braked ergometer. Assessments were done using the Biodex system 3 pro Isokinetic dynamometer for proprioception assessment, applied on the knee joint in three different angles (0-30, 0-60 and 0-90). The Digital Surface EMG system, was used to assess the muscle activity of the vastus lateralis, tibialis anterior vastus medialis and rectus femoris muscles, measuring both mean amplitude value and mean frequency value for each muscle. The cognitive assessment was conducted using the Determination Test battery of the Vienna Test System to assess the stress tolerance, attention concentration function and reaction time pre and post fatigue. Results, The results of this study revealed significant decrease of the proprioceptive functions in active repositioning joint sense post fatigue in both angles (0-30 and 0-90) degree while no significant changes were detected at (0-60) angle. Also the study results regarding changes post fatigue in muscle activity parameters assessed by EMG declared significant decline of mean amplitude and mean frequency values in all assessed muscles. On the other hand the cognitive function were significantly improved post fatiguing exercise in domains of stress tolerance ,concentration and reaction time while the attention function was significantly decreased post fatigue

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